that s the backup. we can impeach, but you know what s going to happen and i don t want to give this president is tooling to run around the country and say they tried and they missed. we all know what that means. i am out of time. i m getting the wrap time, but i have you here so i want to ask you a couple more questions. the closed-door hearings we re seeing in house of representatives. why close doors? why allow hope hicks and all of these trump administration people, donald trump jr., why let them testify behind closed doors? why not make them testify in public? if they are not going to answer questions why not do it i m not a lawyer but i think i know what jared nadler is doing, he is building a record, he wants to go to the court at some point and say, here is the backdrop to this request. i think by having her there and being able to show on the record that 120 some times she refused to answer questions, that she
the committee, i m clearly not a fact witness but i hope i can give them some context and show them how strikingly like watergate what we re seeing now and as reported in the mueller report is. reporter: and, craig, one of the things to watch for this afternoon is, there is sort of a warning shot fired by the top republican on the committee. doug collins has told jared nadler, a reminder, if you will, of the rules of the house, which preclude members referring to this president or any president as a liar or a criminal or any of those sort of heated pieces of rhetoric that might spring from this kind of event. so republicans will try to say this is just a show, and perhaps we will see them trying to kind of view more closely to the rules if there are democrats members who make those sorts of claims. it s a little bit of a tricky situation there. those rules are long existing
impeachment. that said, the hearing that s coming up today has generated a little head scratching. i talked earlier with an aide close to members pushing for more aggression when it comes to this impeachment talk. this aide told me they found it perplexing, don t understand besides bringing in historical context how exactly this particular moment is going to change things, vis-a-vis congress relationship with the white house, and potentially see it as an effort of a red herring making members believe that leaders on capitol hill are doing more when it comes to impeachment than they actually may be doing. remember, even though we know chairman nadler according to cnn s reporting pushed pelosi to be more aggressive on this topic she doesn t in there yet and that s generating internal frustration. consternation with the house democratic caucus. betsy, thank you. elizabeth holtzman and kelly o donnell on the hill.
how did we how did they have hearings? we got educated about the facts. the facts were read to us. read like we were -year-old kids. betsy committee chairman jerry nadler is confident that mueller will appear at some point. why not wait until they have a commitment from mueller or he s subpoenaed before holding this hearing? publicly he want nothing to do with congressional testimony. could take some time to push him to come in. could mean a month or more than a month. of course, if attorney general bill barr tells mueller as a former justice department employee he doesn t have to go in, then we can t rule out the possibility of a legal fight to enforce any potential judiciary committee s subpoena to make mueller come in. meantime, there are a number of members of capitol hill who want to see some sort of movement when it comes to a broader and clearer conversation about
given mr. barr s public record of bias against the special counsel inquiry, he is not a neutral observer and is not in a position to make objective determinations about the report. a short time ago, jared nadler offered this reaction. they contradict what the special counsel found. it s a lie about the special counsel but we should not be surprised anymore. chairman nadler already threatening to use his subpoena power to get what he wants. thank you. for more, let s bring back special report anchor bret bear. i want to read for you one of the tweets that the president issued today and he hasn t been putting out many this weekend. he writes no collusion, obstruction, total exoneration , keep america great. obviously he has been quite muted this weekend.